The YouTube Interview with President Obama

YouTube stars Bethany Mota, GloZell Green and Hank Green interview President Obama today at 5pm ET. Watch it here along with the CNN Politics team, who will be feeding in live updates and reaction from social media.

Here is some more about what to expect from these Youtube interviews as provided by CNN White House producer Cassie Spodak:

Format:

Should last about 45 minutes

Interviews will take place consecutively, hosted by Google’s Steve Grove

Background:

President Obama has participated in post-SOTU Google/YouTube hosted interviewers before. The difference this year is that the interviewees are traveling to the White House (instead of interviewing him from home). In 2013 questions came from popular users of social media but 2014 and 2012 seemed to involve just your average American. This year, one of the users has more than 8M YouTube subscribers, the other two have around 3M and 2M.

Why would the White House want to do an interview with Glozell? She's got 3 million subscribers on her Youtube channel. She's probably most famous for videotaping herself taking the Cinnamon challenge. Don't try this at home, kids:

by zbyronwolf1/22/2015 8:24:46 PM

Jake Tapper did a segment on The Lead about the Youtubers who will be interviewing President Obama... take a look:

Most asked question on Google during the first ten minutes of the State of the Union: "How old is Obama?"

by zbyronwolf1/22/2015 10:13:41 PM

Here I had thought this would be one interview with three Youtube stars. Turns out it is three successive interviews. One CNNer pointed out it looks a little like a weird episode of The Bachelor in the East Room.

by chris.moody1/22/2015 10:13:52 PM

Based on a quick look at Twitter, it appears more people are still talking about The Patriots ball controversy than this YouTube program.

So far, nice Qs to Obama from Hank Green. Wish he had follow-ups, but totally understand he feels pressed to get to everything.

by zbyronwolf1/22/2015 10:18:20 PM

I wish he had followed up on drones and civilians. And I wish he had asked it in a more pointed way. But it's still an important issue. The idea that Obama is saying the US government has made mistakes in drone targeting should probably not be overlooked.

One of Hank Green's most popular videos is about a homicidal squirrel. It's been viewed over 6 million times.

by zbyronwolf1/22/2015 10:22:55 PM

So i guess now we know why the White House picked Hank Green. He brings a photo for the president to sign and points out he used to take medication that cost him $1,100. Now it costs Hank $5. Probably true. A lot of other people have different stories.